Philly.com is reporting that St. Joseph's Prep senior Sean McGinn will attend Penn in the fall. He's 6-foot-4, 255 pounds and started at defensive end as a junior before also playing offensive tackle this past year.

He was also looking at Brown, but loved Penn from the beginning.

"When you combine the good academics and football with the fact that Penn's so close to home, it just makes sense," he said. "Growing up, going to games at Franklin Field and the Palestra, I always had a good feel for Penn. And during this process I've only heard good things."

Of course, winning the Ivy League championship can't hurt.

In addition to gridiron news, the article also mentions that Fran Dougherty, a 6-8 center on Archbishop Wood's basketball team, will announce his college decision today at 1:30. (However, I don't think it'll be televised like those press conferences top-level football recruits have on ESPNU.)

Despite the recent troubles of the Penn program, the Quakers are believed to be the favorite with Princeton, Lafayette and New Hampshire in the mix. Then again, he should fit right into this Penn team: he's currently sidelined with a stress fracture in his foot.

(HT Tannenwald)

This year might not have been the best for Penn sports. But that's not to say that it wasn't an exciting year, with plenty of big news stories. So here is my personal top 10 moments ("moments" loosely defined) of the year. And yes, some are positive, while some are negative.  So continue after the jump for the picks.

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This just in from the Inquirer: Running back-linebacker Sebastian Jaskowski has committed to Penn. The Wharton student-to-be from Moorestown, N.J., chose the Quakers over Princeton, Brown, and Harvard.

The Inquirer writes:

The 6-foot, 200-pound Jaskowski enjoyed a dominating season on both sides of the ball. He rushed for 1,578 yards and 19 touchdowns on 164 carries and caught 17 passes for 200 yards and a touchdown. At linebacker he recorded 68 tackles.

Jaskowski is expected to primarily play offense for Al Bagnoli, although the Quakers have a glut of young rushing talent.

From the department of not surprising news, Penn football had 18 All-Ivy selections, including senior linebacker Jake Lewko, who shared the Asa S. Bushnell Cup with Brown receiver/returner Buddy Farnham as the Ivy League's top player.

Six of the 18 received first team honors, including both of Penn's starting cornerbacks, seniors Jonathan Moore and Chris Wynn. This was Wynn's third straight All-Ivy year; the last Penn player to do so was receiver Miles Macik (1993-95). The other four first teamers were Lewko, junior offensive lineman Joseph D'Orazio, senior defensive lineman Joe Goniprow and junior kicker Andrew Samson.

In addition, coach Al Bagnoli was named a candidate for the Eddie Robinson award, which goes to the top coach in the Football Championship Subdivision. Other candidates of note include Villanova's Andy Talley and Dale Lennon of No. 1 Southern Illinois. This is Bagnoli's third appearance on the Robinson Award list; he finished ninth in 2002 and eighth in 2003.

There were two huge stories this weekend in Ivy football outside of Penn's title-clinching game. I briefly mentioned both of them in my Ivy football recaps story but here's some more analysis and links to other schools' newspapers.

The biggest story was that Princeton fired coach Roger Hughes. The Daily Princetonian has an article detailing the firing, which took place less than 24 hours after the team had won its season finale. (Be sure to take a look at the comments.)

Choicest quote from the article: “It was surprising how early [the announcement] was, but it’s nice because if you’re going to do it, do it early,” [sophomore quarterback Tommy] Wornham said.

Last year the only Ivy coaching change was Jack Siedlecki, who announced his retirement as Yale coach the day before Thanksgiving. Yale would eventually replace him with Tom Williams in early January.

Ironically, Williams was responsible for the second big story of the weekend. Coaching in The Game for the first time, Williams took a play out of Bill Belichick's playbook. But just like the New England Patriots coach two Sundays ago against the Colts, a big fourth-down gamble failed miserably.

Leading 10-7, Williams elected to use a fake punt on fourth and 22. It was stopped seven yards short and Harvard would score the go-ahead touchdown on the next possession, eventually winning, 14-10.

Here are the recaps from The Crimson and The Yale Daily News. The comments to the YDN article were pretty vicious, including my favorite: "In the same vein as the '68 Crimson headline, 'Harvard Wins 29-29', how about the Daily running, 'Williams loses to Harvard 10-14'?"

However, I tried to find a column from either newspaper attacking/lauding/lamenting/questioning Williams' decision, but couldn't find anything. The Crimson did have this notebook, but no real opinionated column. Considering the YDN had an entire page dedicated to The Game, you'd think they'd have more than one story on the actual contest. It appears not. (Forgive me if I missed one somehow.)

The decision to go for it even got national attention. Sports Illustrated columnist Peter King wrote about it, though he disagrees with my Belichik comparison. From section 10, bullet point h of his Monday Morning Quarterback column (he apparently doesn't know how to use bullet points correctly):

h. Don't even compare the Yale coach's call -- running a fake punt while up 10-7, under three minutes to go against Harvard, fourth-and-22 at his own 25, best punter in the Ivy League back to punt, no timeouts left for Harvard, Yale defense having controlled the day, runner stopped short of the first down at the Yale 40 -- to Bill Belichick's. Not applicable. Belichick had a fourth-and-2 with Tom Brady on his side, not wanting to punt the ball so Manning could have two minutes to make him regret it. The call by Tom Williams made Belichick look like a Bill Walsh/Albert Einstein combo platter. I don't want to make this a scar-kids-for-life moment, because it shouldn't. But imagine those kids at Yale, walking off a football field for the last time in their lives, thinking, "This is my last memory in football? My coach going for it idiotically on fourth-and-22, causing us to lose to our arch-rivals?''

In response to King's comments, the football humor site (that has NSFW language and occassionally photos) Kissing Suzy Kolber said "Jesus, [Williams] really did that? What a moron."

Fresh off clinching at least a share of the Ivy League championship, the football team got some recognition yesterday after their 17-7 win
over Harvard.

For the first time since the 2005 season the Quakers entered the national rankings, as their 367 votes earned them 24th in the latest
Sports Network Football Championship Subdivision Media Poll. Penn's 7-2 record is 18th best of any ranked team, and its two
losses were to No. 2 Villanova (14-3) and No. 22 Lafayette (20-17 in overtime).

In addition, the Quakers got two Ivy Player of the Week awards. Senior linebacker Jake Lewko won Defensive POY after a career-high 15
tackles, while senior quarterback Kyle Olson won Offensive POY after scoring both of Penn's touchdowns.

With the de facto Ivy championship just two days away, Keiffer Garton's return to practice couldn't have come at a better time. Then again, Kyle Olson's stellar play of late raises an interesting predicament. Do you go with your established starter? Or do you go with your hot hand?

Al Bagnoli sides with the latter, as he already said that Kyle Olson will be his starter. But the question remains: how much playing time will Garton actually see? Bagnoli said “Kyle will take the majority of the snaps and we’ll play it by ear, see what happens. We fully intend to get Keiffer in the game.”

Sure, Garton should get in the game, if not to get the talented quarterback a chance to make some plays, then just to make sure Harvard has it in the back of its mind. But what if Olson continues to light it up, like he has the last two weeks? Harvard's No. 6 Ivy pass defense shouldn't be too much of a probem for him, but its No. 2 run defense certainly will be. If Olson plays well and say the team takes a lead, does Bagnoli risk bringing in a completely cold Keiffer Garton?

It seems that "playing it by ear" simply means Bagnoli will have to make the decision on the fly. If Olson can't get the offense going, Garton will almost definitely see the field. If Olson keeps it up, though, I don't think Bagnoli can (or will) go to Garton. And when you throw in the consideration of whether he will mix in the wildcat/slash/single-wing/whatever, this will almost definitely be the most interesting element of this game. And Bagnoli's decision could very well end up determining the next Ivy League champion.

I wouldn't be telling you anything new if I told you the Penn defense was good. But what's shocking is just how great the unit has been this season.

Arguably, the Penn defense has been the best in the Football Championship Subdivision. They have allowed only 11 points per game, the fewest in the nation. On top of that, the Quakers are giving up the fewest rushing yards per game in the FCS, with 60.88. In all of Division I football, only BCS No. 3 Texas is giving up fewer yards per game on the ground. I know it's silly to compare FCS teams with FBS teams, but that's an impressive stat no matter how you look at it. Penn last led the FCS (then Division I-AA) in these two metrics in 2002.

The Quakers are also second in total defense (227 yards per game), sixth in opponents' quarterback rating (99.58), and tenth in sacks (three per game). Penn leads the Ivy League in every major defensive category according to the NCAA website.

As far as this weekend's matchup against Harvard goes, fans shouldn't expect either team to have too much success on the ground. While Penn has the best rush defense in the nation, Harvard's is third-best. There's a good chance the contest could be decided through the air, with Penn's 88th ranked passing offense against Harvard's 88th ranked pass defense and Harvard's 60th-ranked throwing attack against Penn's 21st-ranked pass 'D'.

Among the many great things the Quakers can take away from Saturday's 14-7 overtime victory over Brown, the performance of senior wide receiver Kyle Derham may be among the most crucial.

It's no secret that the Penn passing game had been nearly non-existent this season, ranking in at 107th out of the 118 teams in the Football Championship Subdivision going into Saturday's contest. Of course, a lot of that had to do with injuries to nearly every quarterback on the roster and the focus on the impressive running game, but it hasn't been helped by the inability of any wide receiver to step up. That changed Saturday, as Derham caught 8 passes for 95 yards (both season highs for the Quakers). Two of those came in overtime, including the game-winning score, his first since last year's opener against Villanova.

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Another Quakers win, another week of What the Other Side is Saying. This time let's look at the Brown Daily Herald's coverage, as well as that of the Providence Journal.

The Daily Herald just had a simple recap of the game, leading with a quick recap of Penn's overtime woes since 2006. Two interesting stats from the article:

1) If the Quakers had shut out Brown -- and they were a pick six away from doing so -- it would've been the first time Brown failed to score since 1996.

2) Brown running back running back Zach Tronti didn’t touch the ball in the second quarter and got only six handoffs in the final two quarters, yet somehow had 63 yards on 11 carries, making him only the second running back to gain over 60 yards against Penn this season.

That second stat about Brown's limited success running the ball led to two comments on the Pro Jo recap. The two comments astutely called out Bears coach Phil Estes for relying heavily on the pass. Meanwhile, Penn's vaunted rush D did give up 5.7 yards per carry to Tronti, yet he didn't even get a dozen carries. Considering Penn -- usually a run-first team -- focused on its passing game, perhaps if Brown had gone to its rushing game more often it would've compensated for the below-average performance of its Ivy-leading passing attack. Then again, it's easy being a Monday (afternoon) quarterback.